The Hobby.....say a 5 year timeline.

[trip74-migration]

While they might not be completely extinct, I would pretty much proclaim them dead as collectibles for all intents and purposes.

 

 

I'd say that's a pretty good measure of a "thing of the past." And that took what, 10 years from the peak? I wonder what vinyl aficionados were saying back then to the naysayers.

 

I think using vinyl records as a comparison to comics doesn't work so well. Vinyl didn't die off due to rising prices and decreasing customers, it was surpassed by cassette and then CD music. The music industry customers didn't dwindle the way comics customers have been.

 

But that's why it's perfect. Printed monthly comics are being surpassed by movies, games, etc. in the same way as records were surpassed. Super hero (and other "graphic") stories are still being told- they are just told through different media. There are still millions of people who love super heroes. That's not the issue.

 

Good points. I don't think the translation is quite the same, though. In the music example, you are getting the EXACT SAME product, as vinyl goes to cassette, to CD, to mp3 etc. In the comic example, movies, games, TV shows etc are NOT the same product. They are completely different mediums. As comic sales have declined over the past two decades, customers have not been shifting to the SAME product, aside from tpb and the developing digital format.

 

The vinyl records analogy does fit perfectly with the progression to digital comic delivery, though.

 

some afficianados would claim that that the vinyl and CD/digital reproductions are far from the same. that difference is what's driving the vinyl market. But I would agree with those that point it out as a niche market. IMO, that applies incredibly to comic books (in that the basic story can be told in many mediums; the value of comics is the love of the medium, which is very similar to vinyl).

 

I wonder if the direct sales market was a huge short term (20-30 year) boost that ends up killing the long term comic book market. Taking a page from the tobacco companies here (horrible ethics, good business practices), you need to continue generating a new market for your product. Obviously comics aren't going to kill us (to the best of our knowledge), but if we expect them to maintain value, someone has to be willing to buy them.

 

The problem with direct sales is that it targets pre-existing buyers. That would suggest that it peaked in the 90s and will continue selling to us buyers that loved comics at the time, but as we age, will a younger market step in to keep the market alive?

 

Or will the market value continue to rise as "we" have more money to buy a scarce resource, then drop like a rock as "we" move on and no pockets step in to fill our places. Perhaps specific keys (early Superman, Batman, Wolverine) are able to survive as movies and pop culture keep them alive, but what beyond that?

 

Responding to a thought on the earlier poster, CD sales match comic sales in that, in response to sales dropping, the production companies have tried to revive sales by dubious means, rather than by focusing on increasing quality. As a 90-s exile that's currently returning to the industry, I see very little compelling in the current moderns (at least among books I used to collect). I see continued gimmicks ("killing" a member of the FF) in place of quality products.

 

If all we have to look forward to in moderns is poor gimmicks and a collapse in new interest, how will that spur interest in the older books? Maybe movies will spur interest for a while, but seeing the available information for the new X-Men movie, how long will that last?

 

Don't mean to be negative. I'm just getting back into the hobby. I want to fill in runs I couldn't when I was young, but I also considered the investment aspect. Just thinking through this thread is sobering.

[mpt6974]

Just visit a "Borders" book store and see the light. I went to one for some Christmas presents and they had six cashiers and six long lines.

 

This is a perfect example actually, because Borders is going bankrupt.

 

The stock has gone from $26 at the start of 2005 to .84c at today's close. The chart looks like a black diamond ski run.

 

The other sobering factor is the size of the magazine displays in bookstores and convenience stores. My 7-11 has a three rack, 6ft wide display. This is down from two 10 rack, double level display racks 10 years ago.

 

This is mostly due to internet selling until recently, and not book levels themselves, although the Nook & Kindle are cutting into it recently. When you sell on the internet, you don't have to pay the overhead costs associated with a brick & mortar store. This allows you to sell items for cheaper on the internet, and most people don't mind buying over the internet these days regardless if they can see the condition of the book or not.

 

Also as for the AIG thing - it didn't miraculously come up from $1.00 or whatever it was trading at. There was a reverse stock split where the company issued one for twenty shares split. This means that for every 20 shares you previously owned, you now only owned 1 share of the company. The reason this is legal is because the overall monetary value is the same, but not the number of shares or stock price.

 

Before the split it was just over $1 a share. After the split when the bell opened the market - it was then @ $20 something a share. A lot of ignorant investors who didn't know what a reverse stock-split was called in to my firm and thought they were bajillionaires.

 

However it's still a decent buy at the $20 two years ago at that price point range if it's up around $40 now. But just about every stock has had a tremendous run the past two years though after the bottom. It's just not as cool as having a $1 stock go to $40.

 

When I was a professional trader I invested in TEN (Tenneco Co.). Take a look at the run on that stock from Early 2009. Low of $.70 in march 2009. I bought 2000sh @ $3.50 once the fibonacci resistance had broken with decent volume around $3.50 and sold later when it approached $15 which was a major price resistance. It's now trading over $43 a share.

 

 

[mpt6974]

Don't just invest in a stock because it's cheap. Borders is probably a horrible idea to invest in. There are many more interesting penny stocks that will get your blood boiling with the gambling nature of OCBB stocks. You NEVER want to trade bullishly on a stock that has fallen that hard without some signs in stock price that it's going to potentially come back up.

 

i.e. If it fell from $50 a share to $3.00 within two years and traded sideways for 2 months before falling to $.80 a share. You would want to wait to purchase until after the stock price had increase over $3 a share with above average volume.

 

Or if you REALLY like gambling with the promise of huge returns - trade options. 60% price swings in a day in some of the more volatile stocks. Take a look at FAS. It moves 3x the direction the financials do on the bullish side. If the financials are up 3%, you are up 9%. If they are down 3%, you are down 9%. One of my trading co-workers lost $110K in two days trading FAS options and was subsequently fired. It's great if you can hedge yourself, but if you have no idea what you're doing - or have just enough knowledge to be dangerous - you can send your money to me instead while I kick you in the nuts.

[Conan_Aficionado]

nostalgia doesn't care about the present or the future.

 

The sooner we go digital with comics, the sooner we can bring in the youth into the hobby. Eventually, they'll realized that collecting CD's and memory bits is not the same as collecting the actual physical paper comics. The ones who turn into serious collectors will undoubtedly want to hunt down some of the paper predecessors to the digital age.

 

And the sooner they go all digital the faster that comics will become a global phenomenon. I have a cousin in South America that gets his comics dose via the internet.

 

We have collectors in Canada, England, Australia, Europe. Now, all we need is to turn the Russians, the Asian and the South Americans in collectors. Whether the world likes it or not, English will become the predominant language. I remember watching that Diane Sawyer special on China, those kids read and speak better English than I do.

 

I'm not to concerned about the future of the hobby.